


The Quiver of a Heartstring

by tackytiger



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Cheating, Cheating Harry, HP UnHappily Ever After Fest 2019, Hate Sex, Inappropriate Erections, Infidelity, M/M, Minor Injuries, Minor Violence, POV Second Person, Pining, Switching, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-10-12 10:13:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20562605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tackytiger/pseuds/tackytiger
Summary: Draco Malfoy has been away for eight months and seventeen days, but now he's back, and Harry has never stopped wanting him.It's a shame Draco doesn't want Harry back.





	The Quiver of a Heartstring

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Quicksilvermaid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quicksilvermaid/gifts).

> This was written for the Unhappily Ever After fest 2019, and boy, is it unhappy!
> 
> It's a little vignette of an extremely toxic, unhealthy relationship, so please mind the tags. There is physical fighting, infidelity, and everyone is sad. And I mean everyone.
> 
> The prompt I chose was the following:  
Draco or Harry are in a relationship with someone else. One cheats with the other in an intense fling. But in the end goes back to their partner.
> 
> I played with it a little, so I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> This is a gift for my little skittering alleycreature, quicksilvermaid. The dark becomes you, my lovely.
> 
> As always, huge thanks to my beautiful gang of betas for their wisdom and generosity.

Not that you're counting, but it's been eight months and seventeen days since you last saw him.

He was your best birthday present, that night: the fierce, possessive slide of his hand into yours as you left the pub; the raw edges of his kiss-swollen mouth as he smiled and joined in with a round of Happy Birthday to You, though all you could think about was the way his lips had felt, opening hot and desperate at the yearning press of your mouth, his back at the alley wall and your hand down his trousers. 

Later, in the end cubicle of the grotty toilets in the Muggle nightclub, you cherished the shocking, arousing dip and retreat of his fingers, filthy with lube, steadier than you could ever have been if he'd allowed you to touch him like that. You came on a curl of those fingers, hard and sooner than you'd have liked, all over him.

When you walked him back out into the club with a desperate fist twisted in the body-warm cotton of his t-shirt, you could see the faint fluorescence of your own come gleaming in the weft, under the black lights. You liked that, the claiming stain of you on him, the shaky relief of orgasm weakening your legs, allowing you to cling onto him just that bit harder. He let you, seemed almost fond in fact, and he even asked you home afterwards, with a collusive wink and a jerk of that silver-gilt head. You went, of course, always powerless in the face of his interest.

You turned twenty-nine while fucking him, hurtling dizzily towards another orgasm against the soundtrack of your own helpless groans and the obscene crack of your skin against his. You liked it too much, being inside him. He preferred to top, and you didn't often get to feel the greedy wet clench of him around your cock. "It's your birthday," he murmured, and braced himself for the needy thrust of you, the arch of his back and dip of his neck serene and patient. After you came in him, you coaxed his softening cock back to quivering hardness, and sucked him off until he came in your mouth, silently, his eyes wide and distant. 

Your come was still tacky on the tender crease of his thighs when he told you that he didn't want to see you anymore.

* * *

A hundred times since then—a thousand, maybe, too many times to count—you’d wondered what you could have done to make him stay.

He was interested in you, you’d always known that. Sometimes, back in school, it had felt like you were the only two that mattered. Sunlight striking his pale, compelling face, turned as it always was towards you; every inch of him seemed like a beckoning cry; every meal was an excuse to watch each other; everyone in the exam hall heard the proclamatory tinkle of him smashing his glass at the very sight of you. 

And then you got him, after all that—because even after broken noses, and treachery, and a lifetime of slurs, and you splitting his skin open like he meant nothing at all, you realised that wanting him was something that came easily.

It had happened first in school, that dismal eighth year when you ate all your meals in the stuttering cool air of the colonade because you couldn’t bear the Great Hall, and when the teachers all looked at you with distant, abstracted gazes, as if wondering what you were doing there (and it was only what you were wondering yourself, after all), and when every evening was spent flying with Malfoy, Seeker against Seeker, both of you too old and vicious and careless to play on the house teams, and neither of you wanting to be part of a team anyway.

You spent hours up there in the gloaming, flattened to your brooms, teeth bared, limbs half-frozen, each as reckless as the other. When you were up there with him, your brutal, uncompromising dives making him laugh out loud in admiration, it didn’t seem to matter that Ron and Hermione were always making up for lost time in the narrow single bed of the boys’ dorm, or that you spent every night chasing sleep and losing, or that you couldn’t bear the thought of what would come after Hogwarts. Malfoy was alive, and so were you, and when you were in the air together, that seemed like enough.

The fucking started quickly, once you realised that you wanted that from him too. One minute you were changing out of your Quidditch gear, and you were admiring the long line of his back as he stretched and rolled his shoulders, the next he was eyeing up your bare chest, the weight of his speculative gaze pebbling your nipples, raising a flush, causing your cock to thicken. You felt on display for him, the burn of humiliation tempered by the unfamiliar sight of his approval. You weren’t used to seeing him being impressed by you, and you liked it. 

You stood still for him, widening your stance, tilting your hips so that he couldn’t mistake the press of your dick against the straining laces of your Quidditch breeches. You licked your lips like you meant it, smiled for him, the slow-blossoming brightness of it seeming to disconcert him. He liked that, and smiled back at you hesitantly, before rolling his eyes and then rolling up his sleeves. “Alright Potter, I get it,” he whispered, even as he gripped hard at your flanks and pushed you back onto the changing room bench. Kissing him and being kissed back seemed like the easiest thing you had ever done. You were sloppy for him even then, loose-limbed and panting before he had even got his mouth around your nipple, your hips rocking needily into the press of his hand, your breath a half-caught sob of relief when he let you come in the rutting cradle of his frantic hips.

How many times, since then? How many nights of being too easy for him, of having eyes only for him, of always wanting more? Years of it, on and off (more on than off, despite your friends’ confusion and the _Prophet_’s castigation). It wasn’t ever enough, though—he liked fucking you, but he didn’t want anything more from you. He thought you were obtuse, unimaginative, your Auror career was a joke and your friends were dull. You fancied him rotten, even thought you thought he was a snob, a vain twat. Everything he said was an exercise in dissembling, nothing could be straightforward. You were so used to peeling back the layers of meaning, that when he said he didn’t want to be with you anymore, it took you a while to realise that, maybe for the first time ever, he was telling you exactly what he meant.

* * *

He left Britain a few days after your birthday, or so you had been told—you hadn’t seen him since he kicked you out of his bed and sent you home through the Floo with a rough skate of his lips on your forehead and a clear-eyed, “I’m sorry, Potter” when you held his hand and asked him for one more chance. You owled him a few times, and he always replied. Mostly you told him that you missed him, that you wanted him back. Mostly he replied kindly, which almost made things worse, his languid script a wall between your feelings and him. He told you it wouldn’t work, that you were too unsuited to each other, that you drove him mad with your neediness and that he could never give you what you wanted. You replied telling him to go fuck himself. He owled back saying that it was for the best, and he wished you well. You _Incendio_ed the note and spent four days and nights drinking down Knockturn. He went to New York and was pictured in the _Prophet_ properly snogging a minor MACUSA attaché at a party in the British Magical Embassy. He sent you postcards every so often, stars and stripes and Lady Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge, and on the back, one line to tell you that he was well, one line to hope that _you_ were well. You kept them all.

* * *

And now he's back, dazzling under the lights of an interminable Ministry do, every one of those eight months and seventeen days blinking into nothingness because he’s here, and it’s always been him.

You watch him for ages, it seems, your mouth hot with anticipation and Firewhisky. He’s dancing with a good-looking witch, fair head bent solicitously over dark, his hand a possessive anchor at the small of her back. She laughs a lot, and you know by the telling curve of his smile that he likes that.

You drink against the lump in your throat until your tumbler is empty, but Alex is nearby talking to a gimlet-eyed woman in a diamond tiara, and he’s there with a fresh drink for you before you need to move to the bar. You smile at him, press a kiss into his hair, and if you’re distracted by the lightning gleam of Malfoy’s smile from across the dancefloor, then Alex doesn’t seem to notice.

“Save me from Ignatia Bulstrode, please,” he whispers theatrically, and because you know he spends half his evenings at these things chatting to people so that you don’t have to, you down your new drink and spin him into the next dance. You’re only following the whirl of the crowd, you tell yourself, even as the expanse of floor between you and Malfoy shrinks down to nothing, and then he sees you, and you both stop dancing.

He recovers, first, of course, like he always does. “Potter,” he says pleasantly, and he smiles, though his eyes are wary. And Alex, who’s still settled in the curve of your arm, hisses under his breath, “Is that _Draco Malfoy_?”, knowing exactly who it is, because though Alex is four years younger and his parents sent him off to Beauxbatons, he’s read the Skeeter book _and_ he’s read Hermione’s memoirs (and you suspect he’s read a few of the unauthorised Potter biographies too, though he neglected to mention those when he was blushing sweetly and confessing that he’d always been a fan, the first time you had pulled him in for a kiss against the bar of the Leaky).

You tug Alex by the wrist and smile back at Malfoy, and you say, “Malfoy, this is Alex, my boyfriend.” Alex preens at that, as he always does, even six months after you made it official, and Malfoy’s eyes turn sharp and interested, as he replies, “I must have missed that update in the Potterwatch section of the _Prophet_.” His dance partner has grown tired of waiting expectantly for an introduction, and she sighs and moves off. Malfoy stays, though, and he moves even closer. He puts a hand out to Alex, and his voice is low and liquid when he murmurs, “It’s lovely to meet you, Alex.”

Alex blushes, and his handshake definitely lingers for longer than necessary, but you don’t blame him. You know what it feels like to have Malfoy look at you with that sort of speculative interest, after all. “When did you get back?” you snap, drawing his eyes back to you and your arm tighter around Alex’s waist. “You never said…” and you stop there, because even you can hear the thin thread of need underlying your words, and after all, what could he even have said? On the back of a postcard of Times Square, one line to tell you he’s well, one line to wish you well, and one line to say, “Potter, I’m coming back to London, and by the way, I still don’t want you”?

Malfoy is still, nothing but the flicker of those extraordinary mist-coloured eyes to show that he has noticed your tone. Then he smiles at Alex, slow and cool and greedy, and tells him that Potter has certainly landed on his feet. Alex's delight is instant and so predictable, his face alight with it.

It's always irritated you, his desire to be liked, and the smile he's giving Malfoy is making you want to kick something. So you tuck him a little more firmly under your arm, and your voice is syrupy and laden with meaning when you tell Malfoy, "Yes, we're very happy." Malfoy replies that he can see that, and who wouldn't be happy with a beautiful man such as Alex on his arm, and then he winks—_winks!_—at Alex, whose rising flush is infuriating you beyond measure, all of a sudden.

You tell Malfoy, jokingly, to keep his hands off your boyfriend, only it comes out low and bitter, your voice lethal. Alex is looking between you in growing consternation, and Malfoy tells you to piss off, and then you're both palming your wands faster than Alex can even blink. You jam yours into the softest part of Malfoy's neck, right under the rigid line of his jaw, the part you know from experience is like velvet under the lap of a tongue. He's got you by the front of your shirt, the buttons rending and popping at every fresh twist of his fist, and his wandtip is lodged just under your ribcage. 

There's a wild sort of joy in this, you think—the intoxicating rush of proximity, the throb of his battering pulse beneath the heel of your hand. You're almost sure you throw the first punch, though it's a close-run thing. Your wands clatter forgotten to the floor, and you two are not long in following, a seething jumble of limbs and flesh and fury. Malfoy's elbow to your stomach is a breathless jolt of feeling, and you're smiling through the film of blood on your teeth as you land one beautiful blow on the tender arch of Malfoy's cheekbone.

You'll be in the _Prophet_ tomorrow, you know that, and you don't even care. They'll have photos of you and Malfoy, with Alex trying to get you apart, and they'll call it a brawl, or a scuffle, and they'll have some glib headline, but they can't begin to imagine the heat of it. They can't capture the triumphant rush of having Malfoy solid and warm under your hands again.

* * *

He comes to you in the bathroom afterwards, of course. They'd pulled him off you, let you shoulder your way through the press photographers. You had shrugged Alex off impatiently, and you're alone at the mirror when Malfoy finds you, like he always does. You see him in reverse as he appears behind you, the door a swinging arc of light that admits him, all black suit and white skin and that tantalising, blood-reddened mouth. He's still furious, and he kicks the door shut behind him before slamming up a locking charm. Part of you wants to stay still, watching him in the mirror, to keep him contained there with your sticky, damaged hand pressed flat against the cool gleam of him in the glass. You turn anyway. 

He's hard, you can see it in that devastating slim-cut Muggle suit he's wearing, the straining heft of him obscene against the beautifully tailored fabric. You swallow, thinking of him storming through the crowds with the evidence of your touch on him, his want blazing from him. You think he'll allow you to touch him, and so you cup him almost gently, your thumb moving in a soothing rhythm against the line of his cock. He winces, almost whimpers at your touch, and with your other hand you press against the spreading edges of the purpling bruise under his left eye. "Beautiful," you whisper. 

He hooks his chin over your shoulder, the new nearness allowing him a slow grind against the heel of your hand, and spits a lurid mouthful of blood into the sink behind you. Then his mouth is on yours, and you're kissing back much harder than you should, considering the pulpy mess he made of your lower lip. Every slide of his tongue is a fresh blossom of pain and pleasure, and you don't even try to stop the groan of desire that rises from somewhere deep in your chest when he moves his mouth to the cord of your neck.

He handles you firmly, almost dispassionately, but his breath is catching in his throat when he turns you around and presses against the small of your back so you sink low for him. He keeps one hand there as he gets you ready, tautening the arch of your spine as the thumb of his other hand nudges insistently into the puckered whorl of your arsehole. As he pets at you, he murmurs quiet words to your reflection in the mirror, in a voice so gentle that they sound as if they should be words of love.

"What's wrong with you, Potter?" He lines himself up, and you can feel that he's sopping wet already, from the bright swell of precome and the chemical slick of some cheap Muggle lube he carries with him. "You left that gorgeous boy of yours out there at the party," and he stiffens at the moment of intrusion, the shocked grip of you around him, as he fucks himself deeper into you.

"Instead of enjoying yourself out there with your _boyfriend_,"—and the word is very nearly a spit, though it's swallowed by his moan as you flex your inner muscles around him—"you're in here with me, getting fucked over the sink, with my blood all over your good shirt."

He watches himself thrust again, brutal and purposeful, and you feel how the sight of it sends a shudder coursing through him. 

He slides his hand around you, across your chest and into the rend in your shirt, where he had torn the buttons off in front of half the Ministry. The pluck and flick of his fingers over your nipple sends your eyes rolling back into your head. You're mindless with the need to come.

"Does he fuck you like I do?" he asks, watching your mouth in the mirror carefully for your reply. You shake your head, but you need to make sure he understands, so you dredge up the breath and will to speak from somewhere, your voice gravelly with desire. 

"Only you, Malfoy. No one else…"

He laughs at that, surprised into something unguarded, and the gleeful pull of it splits his lip open anew, so you can feel the warm ooze of fresh blood when he hauls you upright and his mouth descends on the stretch of skin behind your ear. 

"You're pathetic, Potter." His eyes meet yours in the mirror, and when he drops his hand into a fist around your cock, you have to shut yours against his naked contempt. His hand tightens around you, and your hips slam forward, chasing the tender circle of his grip. "Take it, then, if it's what you want," he croons, and he kisses the apple of your cheek so chastely that you come in a rush over his bruised knuckles, watching in wonder as his eyes flutter shut. His hips stutter to an agonisingly slow grind, and you both sigh with relief through the wet pulse of his orgasm.

Afterwards, you lean against the sink together, shoulder to shoulder. Because the mirror is behind you, you feel brave enough to drop your head into the curve of his neck. 

"What do you want, Potter?" he asks, tiredly. "Why do we keep coming back to this? We don't even like each other."

"I like you," you venture, though you know even as you say it that what he means is that _he_ doesn't like _you_. 

"We fancy each other, Potter. It's not the same thing. Aren't you going back out to find Alex?"

In answer, you place a careful hand on his arm and Apparate you both out of there, landing with a soft thump right in the middle of your bed in Grimmauld Place. You can feel your wards shivering and rearranging around him, still set to admit him freely after all his months away. You remember all the times he turned up over the years, sometimes sick-drunk and wet-eyed and trembling, sometimes covered in blossoming bruises from someone else's mouth, still slick and musky from someone else's spunk. It feels good to have him here with only your marks on him.

"Malfoy," you say carefully. "I think we should make a go of things. We've been doing this for years, why don't we try to do it properly?"

He laughs again in disbelief. "Because everything except the sex is _shit_, Potter. Because we're not even friends, so how could we possibly be in a relationship? Because we tried going for a meal together once and we ended up shouting at each other across the table before the main course had even arrived. Because sucking my cock in a toilet cubicle is not a substitute for respect or affection."

His voice softens, just a fraction.

"I want a family, Potter. I want to get married. I don't want some weird schoolboy obsession that's warped itself into a decade of meaningless hatefucking."

In reply, you lean across the bed and rummage in the bedside cabinet. The box is there, right where you left it almost a year ago. You take it out, let it sit in the palm of your upturned hand. It's less of an offering, more an imprecation. 

You have to clear your throat before you speak. "It belonged to my godfather's family," you tell him. "So it's partly yours too, I suppose. Or at least, I'd like it to be yours."

He cups your hand in his, jabs at the release button on the box. When the lid lifts, his eyes widen at the dull gleam of platinum inside, the glimmer of diamond constellations engraved around the edge of the ring.

When he finally speaks, his voice is colder and more exhausted than you've ever heard it.

"There's something so very _wrong_ with you, Potter. You could have anything, and this is what you want? You're so desperate to feel something, that you'll settle for this? For me?"

He shuts the box, closes your hand around it until it bites into the pads of your hand.

"Do me a favour, Potter. Just...leave me alone. Please."

He leaves you in the oppressive halflight of the bedroom. You hear the rush of the Floo, and then the only sound left is the ceaseless tapping of Alex's owl at the window, and in your ears the dull thump of your own hopeless heartbeat.

* * *

The ring is easy to resize, and you see Alex admiring it when he thinks you're not looking, turning his hand in the light so the diamonds wink back at him.

The Malfoy owl carries a polite RSVP, and though Malfoy declines the invitation, pleading prior commitments, he wishes you both all the very best for your future together. 

What future, you think. 

Sometimes you wish you had just stayed dead.


End file.
